Drink No Calories & Do PROJECT WORK!

Well well well if it isn’t a late update from your pal Day9!

Despite not being particularly regular about recording my week to week progress in this here tracker here, I have a LOT to say about my DK30! Comically, the biggest impediment to my DK30 was Daylight Savings Time - this royally screwed up my sleep schedule to where I was struggling to fall asleep each night and still needing to wake up early. As a result, I was down 1 or 2 hours of sleep EVERY NIGHT for a week and this COMPLETELY ruined my willpower and focus across the board. On one hand, I should be pleased that I still powered through the agony on most days and hit my goals. On the other hand, I think I need to make lots of sleep the official goal of EVERY week until I die. Otherwise, I’ll never get anything done. Sleep is the most powerful performance enhancing drug baby.

Goal 1 - Drink No Calories Shit. I made it 20 days. After that, we’ve been having margaritas, beer, sprite, energy drinks, sprite, thai iced tea, soju, the WORKS! As I stated above, DST ruined my sleep and, once the clock struck 8, I just gave up and had a beer. It was delicious.

Despite the fact that I’ve gone back to my usual caloric intake in the past 2 weeks, I will say that I’m VERY surprised at how mentally effective it was to declare “drink no calories.” Multiple times I’d be shopping w/ Brit and/or ordering food and she’d say “do you want a sprite?” and I’d automatically reply, “Nope! Drink no calories March!” By making the big decision early, I avoided the exhausting daily deliberation of “do I want a soda? Nah… well maybe just one… but I probably shouldn’t etc.”

I DO really enjoy things like having some drinks and watching TV on Friday night, so perhaps the full on “drink no calories” isn’t the best end goal. I’m curious in the future to explore declarations like “never drink calories on the weekdays” or something similar to, again, avoid those exhausting mental deliberations.

Goal 2 - Allocate more personal project work time I’m SO pleased with my work here! I worked 15-20h per week each week for 5 weeks straight (I’m taking a more restful week this week, but still putting in 5-10h out of sheer joy!).

One of the big helpers was recording EVERY DAY how many hours I worked. This helped me upward spiral and constantly pat myself on the back. Even when I’d feel demoralized (getting stuck on a coding problem for example), I could look at my work tracker and feel accomplished. This was a valuable lesson I learned from my past DK30 of walking every single day - my day-to-day feelings might not line up with the progress I’m making in the long-term, so recording progress is essential.

All in all, I’ve worked nearly 100h in the last 5 weeks on my personal projects and it’s SO invigorating. I find that getting deeply sucked in to some coding or design project is a GREAT way for me to cope with the stress of the world too. I’m unbelievably sick of being stuck inside all the time, even though I know it’s the correct choice. So, the progress on my projects has been a real breath of positivity and change that I’ve been wanting!

Notable Lessons Learned

1. Sleep is essential. I need to prioritize sleep if I want to have ANY willpower to make change.
2. Have a nightly ritual of recording progress before going to bed. I’m always getting more done than I give myself credit for, and the positive vibes from the documentation give TONS of fuel on bad days.
3. I need to plan for OFF time. This past week, I’ve deliberately said, “I’m de-prioritizing project work.” I finally feel energy replenishing and I’m eager to fire things up for next week. Similarly, I think “drink no calories,” needed to be more of, “only drink calories on Friday/Saturday night.” I think it would have helped me be more consistent in the long run.

Long live DK30!

Beverage goals update:

My first 10 days have been mostly good! I had 1 gatorade on Sunday because I was feeling dehydrated (hooray LA weather). BUT, I had a VERY long day on Wednesday and had myself some pupusas w/ 2 margaritas. I nearly fell asleep immediately after eating everything. It was awesome. That said, I’m feeling very positive about continuing my drink-no-calorie goal!

Project goals update:

My project work goals are mainly about scheduling, less about project output. I had 3 goals in mind at the start

1. Do at least one hour of work every morning before streams
2. Do one 3-4h work session every Sunday
3. Do one 2-3h work session on one weekday night.

I’m obviously permitted to do MORE than that if I get into the groove of things, but these are all about regular start times. In my first week, I did a total of 20 hours of project work! It was AMAZING! But, I need to be careful to guarantee that I’m doing NO work at all on Saturday. A full day of rest and mental freedom to piddle around is SO IMPORTANT to me. This week so far, I’ve been good on my morning work, but I might whiff on the weekday session. Still feeling good!